


Great Northern War

by Ustuura



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, First Time, M/M, Midsummer, Russia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 22:05:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ustuura/pseuds/Ustuura
Summary: “I know what Midsummer is,” said Nicky as they climbed the wooden slats that make their ascent from the docks. “We have it in Sweden.”“Believe me,” said Sasha, “You’ve never seen it like this,” he grinned. “We have drinks, vodka. Flowers— I’ll get you a crown!” He mimed placing one on Nicklas’s head, and Nicklas swatted his hand away. “Food, girls,” he went on. “Listen. The sun never sets.”For all it sounded like he was promising miracles, Nicky knew he spoke truth like a holy water spring. He tried to look unimpressed anyway."Sasha, Nicky, Sweden, Russia, war, peace, winning, losing: historical AU, Summer 1710, the Great Northern War.





	Great Northern War

**Author's Note:**

> Background info: between 1700 and 1721, Sweden and Russia clashed over supremacy of northern europe and the north sea. Towards the midpoint of the war, Russia began to prevail, and around 120,000 Swedish soldiers were captured as prisoners of war, and a large group of them were sent to Siberia to work and live in pow camps. 
> 
> Other than that fact, this is not historically, geographically, or astronomically accurate. My knowledge of military history is selective. My knowledge of Russian culture is tangential. Pls keep this to yourselves bc i’m sort of mortified that it exists. Enjoy!
> 
> (thanks to sasha for editing this even though she had to suffer through this misappropriation of her own name by not one but two hockey players/ fictional russian soldiers)

SASHA 

It’s summer, and he and Sanja are sitting on the steps down by the embankment, eating sunflower seeds and watching the fishermen and Swedes climb on and off their boats. It smells like fresh water and mud, and the linden trees are all in bloom. Sasha wipes his nose and spits sunflower shells onto the dusty ground. 

“Sochi,” says Sanja. Sasha groans. 

“No.” 

They’re playing a game called ‘the best place to freeze to death.’ The rules are, Sanja lists a series of ever more far flung and god-forsaken bits of land, and then they argue about whether it’s worth dying there, if maybe you would actually get to fight. 

Sasha figures the game will be over when Sanja runs out of familiar place names. It probably won’t be long. 

This is the kind of thing you do, when it’s July of 1710 and the days last forever, but the war’s moved south and you arrived too late to fight. Poltava decided it, basically, and King Karl and his armies and all the damn Poles got the hell out of dodge, but there are three thousand Swedes left in Siberia, and the most that anyone is catching is fish. 

This summer is hanging in the blank space between defeat and surrender, like the moments after the sun goes down but before the sky gets dark. 

In Siberia, the sun sets slowly this time of year. 

At any rate, there seems to be a mutual agreement to wait until the chill comes back to the air to crown the new king of the North. 

Sanja elbows Sasha in the side. “What the fuck’s wrong with Sochi?”

“You can’t freeze to death in Sochi, Sashka,” Sasha sighs. “It’s too damn hot.” Sanja laughs, and lays back on the stairs. It’s that kind of afternoon.

***

NICKLAS

Nicklas keeps his eyes low as he scans the embankment for the right kind of Russian. There are a lot of people around, but they all seem busy; he wonders where all the dozens of Russian conscript boys who usually hang around, in the square or by the river, decided to disappear to right now, right when he’s supposed to be finding them. Probably inside somewhere, out of the sun. Nicklas would be too, if he could. 

He trips a little bit on the upward slope, and kicks at the ground. He’s trying not to look suspicious. He is a prisoner of war, technically, even though there’s no war in Tobolsk.

Wladyslaw, the Polish captain-cum-taskmaster of the fishing boat where Nicklas is whiling away his captivity, told Nicklas to go and find a couple spare pairs of hands, preferably attached to good sets of arms, to help on deck for today, or however long it actually takes, because four Swedes are are too sick to work anymore, and river herring doesn’t pull itself out of the water.

Conveniently, there appear to be at least four such hands, stretched out over the heads of two of the right kind of Russians, who are reclining in the shade, not fifteen feet away. Nicklas blows out a puff of air and feels it unstick the hair on his forehead. He rolls up his sleeves and tucks the hair behind his ear. 

When Nicklas is practically standing over the two boys, casting a shadow on their chests, he thinks it would probably be prudent to declare himself right about now. He clears his throat, and has the same thought he always has when he’s about to speak Russian, which is ‘damn this language for having the first word you ever have to say to someone be damn near the hardest one to pronounce.’

A breeze moves the leaves overhead. Nicklas puts a hand up to push away some low hanging branches. 

“Zdravstvuyte,” he says. 

The boy on the right opens an eye, and then two, and pushes himself up on his elbows. His shirt sleeves are brown with dirt, and he has yellow seed pods in his hair, which is brown and all fucked up and too long in his eyes and at the nape of his neck. He’s wearing a loose white tunic with the collar untied and falling wide open, and his boots and the knees of his trousers are covered in dust. If he ever had a jacket that marked him as part of Peter’s army, he doesn’t have it now. He looks, frankly, a bit of a mess, but Nicklas can see him focus in a matter of seconds. 

The Russian looks Nicklas up and down, and back up again to his face, and then he grins. 

“Ha-llo,” he drawls, in Swedish, or at least in that style, sitting up fully and putting out his hand. “Aleksandr Mikhailovich,” he smiles. “Ovechkin,” he clarifies.

***

SASHA

Sanja is laughing at Sasha before Backstrom is even out of sight. Sasha swings around to glare at him. 

Sanja says, “That wasn’t very subtle.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are naturally inclined to be so helpful as to slave away on unknown fucking Polish shad boats for kopeks, whatever the Swede skipper’s pet would look like, nu?” 

“Konechno,” Sasha inclines his head. “I’m naturally helpful. I help everybody.”

“Konechno.”

“You,” says Sasha, pulling himself up, “were asleep in the dirt for the majority of this conversation, so you don’t get an opinion.” 

*** 

NICKLAS

Nicklas sort of expected that once he had introduced Sasha and Sasha to the boat and given them their responsibilities, and the issue of gold was sorted out with Wladyslaw, he and they wouldn’t have much more to say to one another. Nicklas doesn’t speak at all to any of the Tatar ship hands, and hardly to any of the captain’s Poles either. As it turns out, they don’t need to talk very much, and when they do they use the language of fish and nets.

The new Russians prove a boon to the boat’s productivity. Both of them seem happy enough to take on chores, and they fall into the crew’s rhythm of cleaning, re-rigging the nets, pulling in the catch. They never lose the habit of treating Nicky like their personal embassador and guide to the ways of ship-craft, though. 

Ovechkin becomes popular on deck. Nicklas learns that Sasha can swim, is good at holding large numbers in his head, and commands an audience while he guts and sorts fish sitting on his ass on wooden slats. Apparently, he and Semin are quite the double act, judging by how much Nicklas’s crew laugh when they bounce a story between them like the nets they’re learning to weave and fold. Most of their jokes are lost on Nicky, but he listens in anyway.

Ovechkin catches him watching from across the deck and ducks his head and sticks his tongue out at Nicklas. He salutes Nicky with his short knife, and proceeds to deftly, if brutally, part a sturgeon from its internal organs.

The Sashas make up nicknames for every man on deck, Russian or otherwise. Sasha Ovechkin is on better terms with Wladyslaw than Nicky is by the end of the week, or at least he thinks he is. One afternoon, the skies open up unexpectedly, miserably, and it doesn’t stop raining for hours. They all shuffle to stand under a spare muslin tarp, and Sasha pulls off his shirt and offers it as an umbrella to Almas the Tatar oarsman, whose back was getting wet. Later, he offers the Captain his pants, and narrowly avoids swimming home. Sasha Semin, of course, takes Ovechkin up on his offer. 

The sun hangs and hangs and the summer passes away. They all sweat rivers and sometimes, in the slower moments, Alex talks to him. 

“Where are you from,” says Sasha in Swedish one day, while Nicklas is watching the wake and halfheartedly counting knots. Speckles of water hit his face tasting like earth. 

Nicklas looks over at Sasha, who is wiping the sweat from his cheek with the back of his hand. “Sweden,” he replies, in Russian. 

Sasha rolls his eyes. “I know Sweden,” he says in Russian. He’s talking slower so that Nicklas can understand him, which Nicklas reluctantly appreciates. “Where in Sweden?” he presses. 

“Gavle,” says Nicklas, and turns his back on the river to lean on the stern railing, and Sasha comes to stand right next to him, turns in to him to talk very close to his ear. This is a Russian thing, Nicklas knows. He pushes his hair behind his ear. 

“What’s it like in Gavle,” asks Sasha. 

Nicklas shrugs. “It’s on a river, like this,” he says, pointing back with his elbow. 

“Mhm,” says Sasha, “and.” 

Nicklas raises an eyebrow at him. “And,” he enunciates, “we have a church, and a square. And um. Well, that’s about it.” Sasha laughs. “It’s cold,” Nicklas adds. 

“Sounds like you’re right at home, then,” says Sasha, throwing one arm wide towards the river bank. 

Nicklas smiles. “Close enough,” he says, dry. “Where are you from,” Nicklas asks, flicking a finger towards the corner of Sasha’s shirt, one that has a little imperial insignia stitched onto it somewhat clumsily. “Near here?” he asks.

“Siberia?” Sasha goggles. “No. No no no.” He laughs. “I’m from Moscow,” he shakes his head. “You’ve heard of it, yes?” Nicklas nods. “It’s far away from here. Moscow is the greatest city,” he grins, “in the world.” 

“Don’t tell that to your friend Peter,” says Nicklas. “I think he wanted to move his best city in Russia to Sweden.” Then he abruptly hopes he’s capable of Russian humor, and that he hasn’t just made a grave miscalculation. Thankfully, Sasha laughs. 

“The Tzar is from Moscow too, you know. We’re neighbors. Were.” He laughs a little more. “But maybe he’s not my friend.” Nicklas gives him a sidelong look that Sasha doesn’t notice. He wonders if Sasha is curbing his patriotism on Nicklas’s account, but he doubts it. There are a lot of reasons to resent one’s own king. 

He’s distracted by Semin yelling at him from up deck. He shades his eyes with a hand and yells back. Nicklas can’t really make out what they’re saying. It ends with Sasha making a rude gesture at Semin far above their heads. 

“Sasha is an idiot,” says Sasha. 

Nicklas snorts. “You love him.”

Sasha groans and buries his face in his hands for a moment. He says, “We’re brothers,” before he amends, “No I mean like, not really. But, brothers in war. In this war. He’s an idiot.”

Nicklas nods. The two Sashas come to the docks and leave together every evening, and spend every minute in between never too far for taunts to reach to ears. He can see them as brothers. At first he thought maybe they were something else. That was wishful thinking. Looking at Sasha now, Nicklas thinks, he would. He would. 

“Do you have any brothers, really?” asks Nicklas. Ovechkin sniffs strongly and shifts a little next to Nicklas. 

“I have two. Mikhail is my older brother. The other one died.” He says it shortly, and it surprises Nicklas. He looks up at Sasha, but he’s looking at the ground, firmly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, slowly. “Was it,” he pauses, “in the war?”

Sasha shakes his head and clears his throat again. “No, it was before I left. We were very close.”

Nicklas nods. “I have a brother,” he says, “Kristoffer. He’s older but I came to fight before he did, because he has a son.” 

Sasha nods. 

“We are,” says Sasha, as their boat is pulling up to the dock on the banks of Tobolsk again, and it is time for them to unload and go back to bed, Sasha giving Nicklas a long look, “both a long way from home.” 

***  
Aleksandr Ovechkin isn’t necessarily like any of the Swedish boys that Nicky knows from home. He’s not a blond and fresh-faced Lias from over the hill, who Nicklas can’t help but tease, even when he knows what he’s doing, whenever they meet across the fields these past few years. He’s not Henke from town, tall and airily arrogant with clipped Swedish, who Nicklas sometimes still dreams about, and shakes his head at himself when he wakes up. Sasha is so Russian that it almost makes Nicklas laugh sometimes, in his tunic, his boots, his high, wide cheekbones, his broken nose. But Sasha isn’t so different from the things that Nicklas has liked before. 

When Sasha insists on coming to Nicklas first, anytime a problem comes up-- as if Nicky has some kind of authority, or had ever been on a boat before three months ago-- Nicklas doesn’t ever step away.

“I think it’s jammed,” Ovechkin will say, one day, soaked to the waist from leaning over the spitting pulleys, trying to finesse the tangles. “I don’t know if we can cut it without ruining the net.” He sounds regretful as he beckons Nicky closer with one big hand, showing him the problem. When it leaves their torsos squeezed together against the bow, Nicklas stays put and notices the water-chilled, sun-warmed solidness of Ovechkin’s chest. 

Nicky nods and squints up at Sasha and into the sun, smirks a little more than he should when he tells him they’ve already met their quota for the day, and another half a net-full of carp won’t matter. 

Nicklas watches Sasha’s back after Sasha flashes him an agreeable grin and wanders away dripping. In a minute Sasha strips off his shirt and goes about with the white fabric slung around the back of his neck like a queen’s swan-feathered mantle for the rest of the day. Nicklas smiles to himself. Nicklas has damp patches soaked into the seams of his shirt from Sasha’s heavy hand and he doesn’t mind.

In the evenings, Sasha stands on the upper deck looking over the haul. Hand on his hip, hip cocked, eyes tracking. He looks like a commander surveying his men. Sasha can count; Nicklas’s chest feels a little tight. 

“Six hundred and seventy,” he tells Nicklas, and Nicklas writes it down. 

Aleksandr Ovechkin isn’t exactly like a Swede, but he’s not so different from boys Nicklas has looked at before. And, he’s here, and Nicklas is here too. 

SASHA

Needless to say, Sasha likes the Swedish boy who runs things on the Polish fishing boat. He can throw two ship lengths of rope over his shoulder like twine, speaks remarkably good Russian, and has hair that shines like a golden onion dome. He introduced himself by his nickname, which for some reason makes Sasha’s stomach flip happily. 

He’s always had a thing for Kolyas. 

Sasha wonders how old Nicky is. He thinks maybe his and Syoma’s age, maybe younger even. He looks it, in the evening, face soft and spotty and framed by his curls.

(“How old do you think Nicky is?” Sasha has asked Sanja. 

“Who, Backstrom?” Sanja considered. “He has a baby face,” he said, making Sasha sigh, “But so grim. Have you seen him take notes?” Sasha has, he has. 

“It’s a hard tell. Fifteen. Maybe thirty.” Sanja ruled, and Sasha groaned.) 

He wonders how Nicky came to be the captain’s right hand, and where he learned to manage men, and if it worries him as much as looks like it does. Nicky at work has a face like a Byzantine saint: serious, dutiful, sad.

Sasha emabarasses himself when they hear a rumor about a treaty from Lev the former drummer boy, that the war is over and Russia will keep the crown. Naturally, Sasha’s first thought flashes to the well-worn fantasy where he walks into his parents’ home in Moscow, calls out their names. 

“Think of it, Sash,” Sanya waxes, that evening, “Paved roads. Pharmacies, streetlights! People that wear shoes in summer.” Sasha grins, thinking of the brassy number on his parents’ door.

Sasha’s second thought is for Nicklas. An empire falls, and Sasha thinks of streaks of blond and broad, river-tinged shoulders. Sasha is used to the violence of his own flights of fancy by now. That-- he embarasses himself, but no one else was there to see, so that’s alright.

He really does wonder what will happen to Nicklas and the other Swedes once they can’t be bartered away for this or another strategic concession. They might keep them on. Sasha is sure that Nicklas is worth his weight in nationalized compensation for the costs of war, but he doesn’t know if the Tzar’s calculus would decide the same. Sasha feels bad after, for thinking that, because he doesn’t presume to know Nicky well enough to appreciate the punishment of his loss at all. He knows there must be people in Sweden who appreciate it all too much more. 

On the river, Sasha can tell that Nicky thinks a lot. He has things to think about, Sasha won’t begrudge him that. Sasha thinks a lot too. Endlessly really, it’s exhausting. He frowns into his and Sanja’s fire. 

Whatever is going to happen, Sasha isn’t holding his breath. When they first heard the rumor of the treaty, Sanya said, “Great. We’ll make it home for supper.”

They all laughed, because they all knew the truth. The distance between here and home is somehow a lot further in peacetime. 

***  
NICKLAS

In late June, they hear a rumor that the Russians and Swedes signed a peace treaty sending Sweden back across the northern sea for good. Nicky comes to work one day having lost a war, and doesn’t even notice. 

“Russia won the war,” says Pavel, on deck, with mild interest. Like he’s commenting on the weather, or some other environmental disturbance. Some wars mean more than others, Nicklas observes, and some people don’t mind hot weather. 

An awkward tension blooms for half an afternoon when the Russians seems to wonder if Nicklas will mind their modest good mood brought on by fortune in the arena of international armed dispute resolution. They’re military men, for the most part, after all, and it’s actually kind of them to care enough to keep their voices down, even if he wishes they wouldn’t. Nicky is the only Swedish sailor on board anymore, and that’s really more of a problem.

Nicky dispels the awkwardness of loss by joining the Russians that night after the haul is in. Ovechkin leans over and asks him, “okay?”

Nicklas is a few drinks in and doesn’t hesitate before he replies. “End of a war,” he shrugs, “I drink to that.” It earns him Sasha’s hand on his shoulder, and cheers from all the Russians who heard. 

Nicky wonders vaguely, drunkenly, later, if he should feel more sorry that his king’s empire is wilting, if that means he’s jaded already.The thing is, Nicklas has been through the eye of the storm of imperial desire. There are thousands of Russian soldiers streaming closer and closer to Nicklas’s family and hometown, and thousands of his own countrymen in exile because of it. Four Swedish soldiers started working on this boat, and three are boiling with fever in prisoners’ tents and one is already dead, because the plague spreads almost as fast as the Russian army. He finds it hard to feel sympathetic for a storm he’s barely survived, no matter who is wielding it. 

So Nicky loses a war and the days keep passing in cycles of blue and green, and he and the Russians drink to peace. 

***

SASHA 

Sasha keeps catching himself actively trying way too hard to be good at catching Polish fucking Siberia fish so that Nicky will be pleased with him. 

Right now, it’s a hot afternoon and Sasha can see Nicklas speaking seriously with the captain by the mooring post, the cloth bag that he always carries his things in dangling from his shoulder. Fishing is done for the day, but they’re far enough up river that it’s a long walk home, and Sasha might be waiting for Nicklas to turn around so he can make eye contact and smile before Nicklas abandons them all for the night. 

Sanja and the boys have been talking about celebrating life tonight in the usual way since lunchtime. 

“Sanja,” says Sasha.

“What,”

“Durak?” He’s lashing a deck of cards in Sasha’s face, looking at him with raised eyes. There are four guys, each perched on a barrel with another in the middle for a table, and someone already found a dubiously clear glass bottle of vodka to share. Sasha’s in a good mood, and this is a game for infinite players. 

***

NICKLAS

Nicklas is already leaving when he looks up to see Sasha waving him over from a little distance. It’s the kind of distance that’s in between close enough to hear voices and too far to tell what was being said anyway. He goes over. He didn’t have a plan anyway, just to go back to the Swedish part of town, which was to say, an encampment, and try not to catch plague from his bunkmates.

“Nicky,” grins Sasha, waving some more, although Nicklas is already close enough.

“You like card games?” asks Sasha. His shirt is pretty much hanging off of both shoulders. Nicklas shrugs. He doesn’t mind card games, and he kind of likes Sasha.

Alex swings around and announces to his crowd, “Nicky’s gonna play with us. Deal him in.”

It’s a funny game the Russians play, and very particular. The last loser wins, and there are no winners. Everybody takes turns pitting chance against itself with number cards, the highest provided being naturally victorious, and when they can’t defend, they’re out. The only objective is to not be the durak, the fool, whatever that said about a sense of achievement in life, Nicky thought. 

“What happens if you’re the Fool,” asks Nicklas when Sasha has finished explaining the rules to him by grasping his shoulder and shouting in a whisper across two other people.

Sasha grins. “Fool deals the deck,” he answers. Nicklas thinks, well. Handling fate has always been a fool’s errand anyway. 

The boys laugh and hit one another, and when it gets down to a few players, everyone goes quiet and concentrating. In the next round, Nicky lays down two queens, a jack of diamonds, and a king of spades. His opponent has to drop out and Nicky takes a shot of vodka. 

Sasha’s eyes flash to his across the table. “Damn,” he says. 

Nicky and Sasha walk back from the docks together, tipsy, talking about card games. Sasha offers Nicky sunflower seeds out of his pocket. Nicky gives him a quizzical look. 

“What?” asks Sasha.

“You’re weird.”

Sasha laughs at him. 

“You’re weird, Nicky.”

Nicky eats the seeds out of peckishness, and endearment. 

In a lull, Nicky is looking up at the sky and contemplating his own relative level of drunkenness- mostly sober, residually warm- when Sasha says his name, bumping his arm, and Nicky spirals down from the stars.

“Nicky, is it true that all Swedes are gallant and so beautiful that it hurts.?” 

Nicky snorts. “Who said that?” 

Sasha shrugs languorously. “Rumor I heard.” Nicky rolls his eyes. 

“I don’t know about beautiful,” Nicky supplies, dry as he can, “Maybe you were thinking of ‘pale.’” Sasha roars with laughter. 

“What would you have done if you weren’t a soldier?” Sasha asks. 

“Carpenter, probably,” says Nicky. 

“Is that what your papa does?” Sasha asks.

“No.” 

“Nicky,” Sasha says again, and he sounds serious. 

“Chto?”

“How did you-” He stops. “Why are you here.”

Nicky almost laughs. There are so, so many answers, and non answers, to that question. Nicky wishes that he knew a good one among them. 

Nicky was born in Gavle. He grew up quiet and hardworking, and when the army recruiters came to his village, they noticed he was suitable for the service. Everyone thought Nicky would make a good soldier. He’s smart, but he works hard. Nicky is nineteen years old. He’s never met a girl he wanted to kiss, and he never tried it on any of the boys he wanted to. He can’t picture his future in Gavle right now, but he knows himself better than anyone, and he knows that he never wanted to die of cholera alone in Siberia. There were things he wanted to do first, a life he wanted to live. He lost more than the King’s war when he came to Russia, and he still isn’t really sure how this is his fate. They say that history is destiny, though, and Nicky can give Sasha that, so he starts to tell. 

“We walked from Gavle to Helsinki. A boat from Helsinki to the peninsula. A caravan from Moscow to Rostov. We marched to Crimea. And then we lost, in Poltava. I thought that was it,” Nicky recites. It isn’t an uncommon story. 

There were moments, during the war, where Nicky would narrate to himself like this, in his head. He could imagine this walk, this battle field, as he might describe them later, to someone, like Sasha, who had never been there before. How he’d held a gun, fired a gun, which was not something he ever wanted, but which he did. He did. It wasn’t that bad, he could say. 

When the broken shells of Russian bullets fell from the sky like a summer hailstorm, Nicky had pictured how this would look from a distance of three months, three, or thirteen years. ‘I know the Russians were praying for rain,’ he might joke, ‘But um. I don’t think anyone asked for something quite that solid.’ 

“They brought us to the camp,” says Nicklas, now, to Sasha. Sasha is incredibly still, face lowered, eyes raised, fixed on Nicky. “Here, in Tobolsk,” Nicky clarifies. “It wasn’t so bad before everyone started getting sick.” He doesn’t try to hide his uneasiness here. “Flu, pox, fever, all those fun stuff.” 

“Shit,” Alex says, softly. “You gonna be okay?”

“I hope.” Nicky huffs. “I’m trying to stay away a lot when I can. Keep my, ah, feet clean.” 

Nicky clears his throat. There’s a lot of pollen in the air. 

Sasha says again, “That’s shit. I’m sorry that happened to you,” and Nicky sighs.

It’s a lovely night. They walk along a dirt road circumventing the church, keeping the low stone wall to their left. Heavy white night-blooming flowers hang among leafy vines, luminescent in the moonlight. 

“It is what it is,” says Nicky. He wants to explain how he feels to Sasha, but he doesn’t think he has the words, the way he feels the distance between himself and anything he knows with all the emptiness of the wide open steppe between here and Moscow, not bad but, dizzying sometimes in its immensity.

“It’s-- there’s nothing here for me. But it could be worse.” 

When Nicky looks at him, Sasha’s brow is furrowed like a mapmaker. He looks up at Nicky. His eyes look grey in the half light, the harshly cut line of his fringe falling into them. He looks sorry, and innocent. He reaches over and plucks a white lily from the church wall. He offers it to Nicky. 

“You could make something,” he says, twirling the stem so it turns face up, anthers nodding to Nicklas.

Sasha offers him a flower like a piece of the world, to put back into the empty place where Nicklas’s future should be. 

Of course, Nicky takes it. Konechno, he takes it. 

Sasha has yellow seed pods in his hair again, and Nicky brushes it them of his crown. He gives Sasha a little smile. 

“This stuff is everywhere this time of year,” Sasha says, with a scrunched face and a noisy throat clearing. “I don’t really know what it is. They don’t have it so much where I’m from.”

Nicky grins. Sasha is a gracious conversationalist.

“God, I’m so allergic of that,” Nicky agrees. “I swear I didn’t breathe or see for a weeks when I first got here. It’s not as bad on the water.” He pulls a face. “You should have see me, I’m like, pink, crying.” 

After that, Nicky’s nose keeps running, the days keep passing in cycles of blue and green. The dust on all their bodies turns by night to inglorious rings of mud, and river herring don’t fish themselves. 

***

NICKLAS 

“You’ll see, Nicky,” Sasha is telling him, “best holiday for sure.”

Nicky can already see. The whole trip here was hills that rolled up and down gently like calm water. Everything is green, blue, flowers, and perfect great banks of cloud. Sasha Semin kept saying, “beautiful country, isn’t it? Kras-ee-vo, just beautiful,” until the Russians started to tease.

What Nicklas can see is that, though the war is, for all intents and purposes, over, and the boys and Sasha are, for all intents and purposes, no longer soldiers, if they ever really were, someone has now decided to muster the full might of the Russian Imperial Army to throw a hell of a Midsummer festival on the banks of this nearby lake. 

“Come with us next week,” Sasha had said, as Nicky remembers it, and Nicklas asked “where?”

“Nowhere, just out of town, we found a lake.” Nicky took a second to wonder over the significance of the lake as Sasha rattled on. “It’s the holiday for Ivan Kupala, his night. It’s the longest day all year.”

They’d had the rest of the afternoon to themselves and they were just about back to the main street along the banks of the river. For once, the markets were busy, and not just with fishmongers. Merchants had been yelling with an enthusiasm Nicky hadn’t witnessed all summer, the smells of roasted foods suddenly floated on the humidity, and children brandishing brooms had been swarming the kiosks for the better part of a week, an air of festive anticipation even Nicky could feel. 

“I know what Midsummer is,” said Nicky as they climbed the wooden slats that make their ascent from the docks. “We have it in Sweden.”

“Believe me,” says Sasha, “You’ve never seen it like this,” he grins. “We have drinks, vodka. Flowers-- I’ll get you a crown!” He mimed placing one on Nicklas’s head, and Nicklas swatted his hand away. “Food, girls.” he went on. “Listen. The sun never sets.” 

For all it sounded like he was promising miracles, Nicky knew he spoke truth like a holy water spring. He tried to look unimpressed anyway. 

Then Sasha clasped his palms together on his chest and made pleading eyes at Nicky from his knees three steps down the stairs and Nicky had almost choked. 

“Oh my god,” said Nicky, “Get up, blyad,” He ducked his head, felt himself doing something stupid to Sasha’s face, some aborted gesture towards flicking his nose or pulling his hair that ended up as neither of those, really. Really he ended up petting Sasha’s face with his knuckles. 

Sasha got up, thankfully. “You’ll come?” he asked.

Nicky couldn’t keep a straight face anymore, felt himself smile. 

“Of course I’ll come,” he’d said.

And now here they are. Sasha was right. Nicklas sees what looks like half the town encamped around this shallow, flat lake. Women in red and white dresses are throwing garlands of daisies, thistles, camomile into the trees, braiding them together to make necklaces and crowns. People crisscross his field of vision like bees.

Sasha leads Nicky with an arm around his shoulder, a hand on the small of his back. Sasha brings him around introducing people, making little jokes, critiques, filling him in. He never leaves his side. 

“This is Nicky,” he says. “Nicky, a sailor, my friend. He speaks excellent Russian!” Sasha says. 

“Vanya,” Sasha informs him, grim. “He hummed all the way from Moscow to Kiev.”

“No,” Nicklas moans, low. 

“He always had a tune in his heart,” says Alex. 

“He should keep it there,” Nicklas intones. Sasha almost cries. 

The butcher, the baker, the innkeeper, the merchants and tailors and fisherman, the commentary goes on. 

“The whole world is here for Midsummer,” Nicky observes, a touch sarcastic.

“Definitely. Both this side of Tobolsk, and the other side.” 

Nicky makes eye contact with Sasha and snorts. 

“They say that Ivan Kupala’s Night is the only night of the year when the ferns blossom.” Sasha tells him, conspiratorial.

“Ferns don’t have flowers,” Nicky offers, already waiting for the punchline. 

“Tochno, Nicky.” Sasha smirks. “Anything can happen.” 

Sasha and his Russian hospitality keep bringing Nicklas food and drinks. Sasha sits them down by different fires to visit with his friends, with their legs pressed against each other. He keeps his arm around Nicky’s back as he translates the conversations into simpler Russian for Nicky’s benefit. He leans his forehead on Nicky’s bony shoulder as he narrates. 

They sing, they talk. They help stack logs for a bonfire. Sasha has to go and join Sasha Semin in an argument with some soldiers about a battle on the Volga in which none of them fought. Nicklas has to go and stand by some barrels for a while, and watch the crowd and drink his vodka in peace. 

Nicky can’t understand Russians speaking to each other at the best of times, can’t understand a thousand drunk Russians celebrating being alive for another year again, but he doesn’t need to speak their language to know who they are and how this village works. He’s from a small, cold town too, and summer tastes the same. 

Nicklas can tell the farmers, because none of their clothes have any buttons. He can tell the townspeople from the farmers, because the townsfolk make conversation like they think it matters, like they’re trying to sell things to each other. He can tell the prodigal soldiers from the townspeople, because the soldiers are boys like Sasha, charged with raw and rootless energy, and while they built this ground and built these bonfire pyres, they’ll be the ones that burn them too, and like it. 

The afternoon slides by like honey. Nicky drinks vodka from brown glass bottles like like it’s water for hours straight. Sasha flickers in the crowd, roaring with laughter, tunic neck hanging open, flowers in his hair. 

Nicky can’t tell if he’s actually drunk or if he just feels like it. A willing attitude to start acting the fool goes a long way, in his experience. 

It’s just that-

Nicklas has crossed a frozen sea, and marched and ridden two thousand miles further than any of the Russian soldati here would ever in all their days. He’s become a fisherman on a river in Siberia that has never even tasted a northern salmon, and it certainly wasn’t because he gives a damn whether Peter the Great stole the Baltic or not. So Nicklas knows that war was a game of Durak and he, he and his mother at home, his brother and his brother’s son, and hell, even all of Peter's soldati, Sasha too, all of them are the fools.

But Nicky was born on the Swedish coast, raised on Viking heroics and sagas without end, and despite everything, encamped and surrounded here, all of them become nomadic, tents thrown up for tonight on the banks of this minor river, the reedy plucking of balalaika strings beating with his heart, bonfires lighting the late brilliance of a solstice sky, Nicky can’t help but feel pull of myth and magic. 

He also feels the wet, double-lensed heat of vodka in his veins.

Someone throws an arm around his shoulders. It’s Sasha of course, face pressed against his cheek, his ear, to make himself heard over the crowd. His broken nose is brushing the underside of Nicky’s eye socket. 

Basically, he is yelling in Nicky’s ear, his other hand tangling in Nicky’s hair on the other side of his face in a way Nicky can’t quite make sense of right now, and he is telling him that, “I got you a crown, Nicky!”

Oh, so that’s what’s going on. The hair pulling is Sasha smashing a circlet of clover and faded blue cornflowers onto his head, and Nicky laughs and ducks away enough to straighten it, until he’s face to face with Sasha, who’s still moving, buoying them both back in the crowd. 

“This is treason, Sasha,” he stumbles a little on a back step. 

“What?” yells Sasha back, head inclined, almost touching his forehead. His brown hair is messy and in his eyes. His eyes are slanted with pleasure.

“Political treason,” yells Nicky, pleased. He’s laughing at his own joke. He’s kind of acting like an idiot, actually. Sasha looks like he might not understand, but he’s still following Nicky, who’s walking backwards, and if he doesn’t stop now, they’ll be in the trees before anyone sees them go. Nicky is thinking of flowers, flower crowns, plucked-off churchyard lilies. 

‘You can make something.’ 

Nicky shifts them so they’re walking lockstep. Sasha’s arm slides tight around his shoulders so his hand is basically pressed against Nicky’s chest. It turns out that Nicky is drunk. He takes Sasha’s hand and steps ahead. 

They duck into the treeline, kicking through the thick curling brush. Nicky realizes Sasha is barefoot. Nicky has no idea what time it is, but the sun filters through the branches in long green-gold shafts. Over their heads gnats rise, illuminated like bubbles in wine. 

God, he’s drunk, he’s a fucking mess. He’s nineteen years old, standing in the middle of a Russian fucking forest on the longest fucking day of the year, not really knowing how he got here, what he’s doing. He thinks perhaps the sun has set and risen again already; it was darker a few hours ago. It’s fine, Nicky is fine. He’s holding onto a tree and laughing. Alexander Ovechkin has never looked this good before. 

Nicky has never really tried something like this. If there were ever a time, though, it would be now. Everyone knows that midsummer nights are famous for mysterious bewitchments between the trees. 

Sasha’s brown hair is curling underneath his ears, his back to the light. Sasha is tall. Sasha’s tan and his cheekbones are flat and his face is round. If he, Nicky, wants to, then Sasha is only a step away. 

They’re still holding hands. Nicky lifts his other hand to where Sasha eyebrow dips over the side of his brow like the curve of a bow, like his jawbone, and runs his thumb over the hair, smooths it. Sasha swallows. Nicky drops his thumb to Sasha’s cheek; he has been wanting, abstractly, to press into the bone there since he met Sasha. Nicky’s thumb blinks Sasha’s eye on its way down his face, and Sasha closes his eyes and smiles like a bride. 

And Nicky’s heart only stops for a split second before he’s pressing his mouth to Sasha’s, which is opening immediately. Sasha’s tongue is in his mouth before Nicky even gets his arms wrapped around Sasha’s neck, which seemed like the thing to do to get him closer. 

Sasha’s hand comes up to the side of his face turning his head for a better, deeper angle, but what makes his stomach swoop is the arm Sasha suddenly has wrapped around his back, forearm barring his waist from behind, hand splayed hot on Nicky’s flank. 

They’re pressed front to front, Sasha tipping into him, rocking into him, with every slide of their mouths. 

“Fuck, blyad,” breathes Nicky, as Sasha thumps them against a tree. Sasha pulls back and a string of spit stretches between their mouths, and Sasha breaks it with a wave of his hand, licking his lips, looking into Nicky’s eyes. 

“Do you want to stop?” asks Sasha, breathing heavily. 

“No,” says Nicky, immediately, and presses into Sasha’s mouth again. Sasha’s free hand takes Nicky’s jaw again, and Nicky breathes into his mouth.

***

SASHA 

Everything is hot and fast with the buzz of vodka and Nicky doesn’t seem like he could stop his mouth moving if he tried, and his hands are moving now too. Nicky’s hand is feeling his chest, pressing hot on his ribs through his shirt. 

Sasha half wonders if Nicky hasn’t done this much before. His hands a minute ago were so, quizzical, and now he doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. 

Sasha slides his hand lower on Nicky’s back, and Nicky licks into his mouth and makes a sound, and Sasha frankly has been hardening in his pants since Nicklas’s body lined up against his and—

He feels Nicky’s fingers at the waistline of his pants, and accidentally slams him against the tree again, hard. Thankfully, Nicky just curses under his breath, unfamiliar words, and pushes his hand inside, finding Sasha’s hard dick and taking hold of it. Sasha thinks he moans, heat leaping through his body into his stomach like adrenaline. 

He keeps kissing Nicky, who’s hand is moving rhythmically, and Sasha lets go of his face, fuck, opens his eyes to the unfocused sight of Nicky. Nicky’s eyes still closed and lips parted now, yellow hair streaking his face and caught in the hooks of tree behind his head, shoulder and chest hitching in time with his hand on Sasha’s dick. 

Fuck, Sasha’s losing coherency, and he can’t get his hand into the space between them but he pushes his leg at an angle to Nicky’s dick, whole bodies in a line and Nicky makes cut off ‘ah’ sound, hand speeding up on Sasha’s cock. 

His palm is slick from sweat and Sasha’s leaking and Sasha can’t stop his hips jerking into his grip, through his fingers into the softness of Nicky’s stomach, can feel Nicky rubbing back against his hip at the same time, almost, almost— 

“Ah” says Sasha, and Nicky presses up to kiss him again, their mouths sliding, teeth knocking, Nicky’s hand never stopping, and Sasha can, can— he comes into Nicky’s hand and into the fabric of his shirt. 

Fuck— Sasha’s panting and undone for a moment, heart beating in his fingers and throat, until he opens his eyes and sees Nicky still grinding against his leg. Shit.

Sasha drops to his knees fast and Nicky’s eyes flick open to look at him, unfocused, pale green and shiny. 

“You look so good,” says Sasha, grabbing Nicky through his pants. Sasha feels so good. Nicky is really fucking hard. 

Nicky moans, his wet fingers tangling with Sasha’s other hand to push his pants down.

Sasha runs his hand up and down Nicky a few times, his cock jerking, and then puts as much of it in his mouth as he can. Nicky lets out another a string of cut off ahs and the hand not digging into the tree behind him is suddenly tightening in Sasha’s hair.

Nicky is blood hot and hitching into Sasha’s mouth. Nicky is twisting above him. Sasha rubs and sucks again, and Nicky jerks and comes in his mouth. 

Sasha pulls off and spits to clear his mouth. He kicks out his legs in front of him and turns around to lean against the tree, against Nicky’s leg. He reaches up to help Nicky do the tie on his pants, then takes his hand and pulls him down next to him.

Nicky looks like a pleased dream, pink high on his cheeks and everywhere else. Sasha can see Nicky smiling to himself as he rubs at his shiny face with the back of his own hand, sticking his tongue out sideways and licking his lip. His hair is all matted and curled as he tucks it behind his ears. He’s still kind of drunk. He turns and favors Sasha with a smile that’s almost a smirk. 

“Sorry I got it in your mouth,” he says.

***

NICKLAS

Afterwards, after Sasha has dismissed his apologies and is still breathing a little hard, he asks Nicklas in a low voice, “Do you do it like this, in Sweden?” 

“Outside?” asks Nicklas’s still broken brain.

“I- What? No. I mean with boys, there.” Sasha doesn’t sound much better, really. He sounds earnest, and kind of still drunk. 

“Oh,” Nicky repeats, unnecessarily. “Sometimes people do. I really thought you meant outside,” and Sasha’s fucking laughing at him, head on Nicky’s shoulder laughing at him.

“You do that in Sweden? Outside?” Sasha asks, then. 

“Only in summer,” Nicklas answers.

***

SASHA

In twenty-four hours, the fair is gone, and the field leveled. The soldati and their tents remain, which is not altogether an unfamiliar scene. Sasha builds a fire, and Nicky sits beside him. 

They share a companionable silence for a few minutes, until Nicky says, casual as you please, “I’ve never done that before.”

“Done what?” Sasha yelps, though there’s really only one thing he could be talking about. 

Nicklas shrugs. “Sex?” 

Sasha goggles. He can’t believe that no one has ever made Nicky come before. Everyone should always want to have sex with Nicky, to mess up his pretty hair, touch his arms and shoulders, bring out his secret slanted smile.

“Why not?” he asks, rudely, he’s sure. 

Nicky shrugs again. “There was always problems in Gavle. I grew up with people there. I can’t just sex with my neighbors, my friends. Boys, you know,”

“Well,” Sasha interjects, clucking his tongue, “you can.” Nicky laughs, but just shrugs again.

“It’s not even that. I could have, if I want to. I probably would if I didn’t come here. I don’t know. People are hard. Plus, my parents are there. Some day I get married. He trails off and makes a disaffected face. “It’s not a big deal. I just let you know.”

Sasha understands, he supposes, abstractly, but-- “But you try it here?” 

Nicky grins and kicks at the ground. “For some reason, here is easy.” He shrugs, and he catches Sasha out of the corner of his eye. “I guess I like Russians,” he says. 

Sasha laughs out loud. He wants to dissect some of the things Nicky just said, he wants to talk to Nicky about it for hours, but Nicky looks like he wants to move on. He’s in a talkative mood tonight. There are other answers that Sasha desperately wants, so he asks, 

“Will you go back to Sweden?” 

Nicky gives him a raised eyebrow. “Okay, okay” Sasha, amends quickly, while Nicky’s snorting his “you tell me, Russki.” 

“Do you ever wish that Sweden won the war?”

Nicky tilts his head at this, shrugging. Sasha secretly thrills at asking Nicky a question worth an answer. He’s looking into the campfire, but he’s intense. 

“I mean, it's like this.” Nicky faces him, his eyes cast aside as he searches for words. He seems to steel himself for speaking, and continues.

“Everybody want. It’s not, the same as wish. Look at our countries. Peter Velikiy, my king, they just want fighting. Who has a wish for land? Land is like, potatoes. Grass.” 

Nicky’s Russian is slipping a little. His accent is strong. Sasha understands. It must be difficult to explain the philosophy of desire in a foreign tongue.

“Fighting is like wanting. Empty space, you want to own it. You have money, you gonna spend it. Have a lot of wood, you gonna let it burn. It makes you heart,” he tucks his fingers in the neck of his shirt, tucks his thumb to his chest “go fast, like.” He shrugs. “People always want to want. People die from wanting to want.” 

Every time Nicky’s mouth opens, some firelight gets inside. Sasha can’t look away from the stars in his teeth. He feels himself nodding, he thinks, he knows what Nicky is saying. 

Sasha wants a lot of things. Nicky falls quiet and looks up at Sasha, and his eyes are aflame; he’s almost smiling. Sasha can feel his own heart pounding too.

Nicky slides down in his seat so they’re almost face to face. His eyebrows are the perfect ghosts of a pair of flying arcs. He’s speaking quietly. “Did you ever fight, Sasha?” 

Sasha remembers the first days of the tour. The general gave a bloody speech about greatness and honor, the Tzar and Russia’s Virgin Mother, right at the beginning. They started out angry after that, jumping and taking big steps because they had too much energy to march in sync. Sasha remembers he stared so hard at his superior, and felt others doing the same around him. He felt like pledging his loyalty by the intensity of his face. He’d noticed the commander’s clenched jaw, so he did his own the same way. 

It was maybe a little because the man’s name was Sergei, he patted Sasha’s cheek, off duty, and his looks were maybe almost right.

A boy next to Sasha was saying the Lord's Prayer under his breath. Sasha’d felt his own hand shaking when he raised it to do a salute. But he felt—

He felt like the paralysis you get from seeing something too perfect, like the exact right temperature one day in spring, or a poem, or seeing something you knew in theory come to life. His stomach flipped and he felt queasy about the next thing, with only a vague idea of why.

On his visit home, just before they left, he said something like this to Misha, who just shrugged, and then he told his mother, who sighed and said she’d do anything to feel that way again, and that youth is wasted on the young. 

Sometimes the line of Nicklas Backstrom’s nose looks exactly like the possibility of a march into battle.

Sasha feels a little bit like that now. His mouth is dry and he tastes smoke. His voice cracks when he tries to speak. Nicky was right. He wants, wants to fill space, wants to make quiet people laugh. Wants to fight. He wants Nicky. 

“Want isn’t always a bad thing,” is what he says.

***

NICKLAS

“Want isn’t always a bad thing,” Sasha says, and Nicky considers him on the ground there in front of him.

“That doesn’t really answer the question,” Nicklas breathes over Sasha’s face. 

“Neither did you,” laughs Sasha. “My question.” Fair enough. 

“Are you sorry about what we did last night?” asks Sasha, quietly. 

“No,” says Nicklas. 

“I wanted— I would have fucked you in the woods,” Sasha says. Nicky chokes because the words fall out of Sasha’s mouth like a bird shot out of the sky. But Sasha puts his hand on Nicky’s knee at the same time. 

“Or you could have fucked me,” Sasha continues, and Nicky’s stomach swoops, even as Nicky makes noises at Sasha to get him to stop, tries to put his fist in Sasha’s mouth. Sasha laughs at him and traps his hand where it’s buried in his cheek, and kisses his knuckles. Nicky is making a habit of walking into traps.

Sasha let’s him go, though, let’s his hand drop back to Nicky’s knee. Both of them look into the fire.

“What do you think,” Sasha asks. 

Nicklas doesn’t know what Sasha means, but it doesn’t really matter. Nicklas thinks, the days are getting shorter now and he doesn’t know what winter will bring. Kingdoms have risen and fallen in the time a summer sun takes to set. Nicklas has a future as wide and empty as the Siberian steppe between here and Moscow. He doesn’t have a Swedish victory, or money, or roots in this land. But he doesn’t have a debt, a responsibility, or a conscription to fight a war either. 

He has, in fact, Sasha’s hand, laying still on his thigh. 

He has Sasha looking up at him through his eyelashes like he can’t help it, like he thinks Nicklas is still watching the fire, like he won’t see. Like he thinks Nicklas might mind. He has Sasha’s promise that he wants to make Nicklas feel that good again and again. He thinks that he has Sasha’s smile, and his laugh, and the breadth of his shoulders. He has Sasha’s enthusiasm and determination to make Nicklas into a friend, which Nicklas truly and secretly appreciates, because Nicklas knows he has always made himself difficult to know, even before he became a prisoner of war. 

Nicklas has a fishing ship and as many herring as he could possibly want, and a handful more summer nights like this, with yellow flowers drifting on the river and the linden trees dropping their seeds. 

There’s winning and losing, and there’s living, too. 

“Come here,” he says. 

Sasha looks to him. 

***

SASHA

Sasha pulls himself up to sit next to Nicky. 

“I didn’t think you wanted to.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Because you said there’s nothing for you here.” 

Nicky huffs in dismissal, but a small smile is curling his face. He’s mostly looking at the ground, until he turns his eyes on Sasha’s, close, head tilted. 

“I don’t know. Maybe it's not so bad.”

Sasha waits, eyebrows raised. 

“Like you said.” Nicklas goes on, “maybe I make something.” 

Sasha’s heart flies away through the air and over the treetops towards the moon. 

“You’re right,” Sasha agrees, hopeful. He puts his arm around Nicky, and Nicklas settles into him just a little. 

“I have time,” Nicklas says. 

“So much time.” Sasha agrees. Why not? They have days and days and days until this war might be decided, and the days are long this time of year. 

Beneath the moon, the sun might already be rising.

**Author's Note:**

> I love russia!nicky so you can kiiiiind of read this as an extremely abstract Nicky in KHL during the lockout AU. i think. It's about making the best of it!! 
> 
> PLEASE let me know what you thought!!!!


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